Businesses often seek to contact residents at home by placing telephone calls. Credit card companies may contact existing account holders at home to solicit their interest in programs such as account insurance or balance transfers, or to solicit new card members. Video rental companies may contact residents at home regarding overdue movies. Polling companies may call large numbers of residents to conduct surveys and polls. Telemarketing companies may call large numbers of residents to solicit interest in various products and services.
However, the business making the phone calls often does not know whether the resident is home or not. The person making the call may get no answer or may get an answering machine. In most cases, the goal is a live conversation with a person, not to leave a message on an answering machine. The time and money spent on the unsuccessful phone call may be wasted. This is a significant problem.
Sometimes businesses make these calls in the evening around dinnertime. The hope is that the resident will be home at around this time. Unfortunately, many residents refuse to answer the phone during this period. This is also a significant problem.
Sometimes the resident is home but is occupied by an Internet session. Typically, the resident will not answer an incoming call during this period. If the resident has standard dial-in access to the Internet, the business will likely receive a busy signal. The resident does not answer because the line is occupied. Some residents may have multiple lines or an ISDN or ASDL connection that effectively gives them multiple lines. Such a resident may know that a call is incoming. However, the resident may not answer the incoming call because he/she is occupied by the Internet session.
The tendency of residents not to answer incoming calls during their Internet sessions is a significant obstacle for businesses attempting to contact these residents. The proliferation of home computers and Internet usage during recent years makes this an increasingly significant problem for these businesses.
It is also unlikely that a business knows that an unsuccessfully-contacted resident was at home, but was occupied with the Internet. Thus, the business does not know that a follow-up call later that day may be successful. Even if it is somehow known that a follow-up call is in order, the business does not know when to make the call. These are all significant problems.